D-FW students incorporate art into Children’s Medical Center internship

by PegNews wire

This summer, six local high school students designed a virtual Child Life Center for the Creative Arts at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth. The students were part of a summer internship program hosted by Huckabee, an educational architectural firm that designs school facilities in Texas.

On Saturday, June 30, student teams formally presented their design concepts to a panel of judges, Cook Children’s and Huckabee personnel, school administrators, their families, and friends at Cook Children’s Medical Center. Students were presented with college scholarships totaling $7,800.

HEB student Michael Krug was one of the intern participants, and he received a $1,150 scholarship. He will soon begin a paid internship with Huckabee.

The program, known as the Next Generation Design Institute, has completed its fifth year of serving high school students in the Metroplex. In addition to Krug, three students from Mansfield ISD, one from Fort Worth ISD, and one from Castleberry ISD began their internship at the Huckabee offices on Monday, June 18.

The project chosen this year was a Center to enhance Cook Children’s art therapy program, a human service profession that utilizes art media, images, creative art processes and patient/client responses to the created products as reflections of an individual's development, abilities, personality, interests, concerns and conflicts. Art therapy provides a visual and verbal approach to accessing and addressing a patient’s needs. As a natural mode of communication for children, art is a means of externalizing the complexities of emotional pain.

Cook Children’s has existing classrooms where art therapy is taught; however, the NGDI students have the opportunity to theoretically create a unique and special space where creativity, learning and healing can be achieved while continually helping the children cope with the health issues that they face on a daily basis. The goal as student designers is to create this unique space, while considering the children's surrounding environment, health issues, various age ranges and the process of learning and creation.

During the two-week internship, students received a hands-on look at the business side of architecture as well as the collegiate side. Students worked in teams, met with executives, traveled to job sites, designed amongst other architects and presented their ideas as well as traveled to Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at Arlington to see what it is like to major in architecture, go to studios and be on a college campus.

Source: HEBISD